We all want to get the feeling of eating an opponent, the feeling of getting ahead, the feeling of winning.

But in this video, I'm going to talk about my perspective on how focusing on winning most of the time actually is not optimal for winning.

And in the end of the video, I'm going to talk about the few times it's reasonable to focus on winning.

First of all, everybody wants to win; every athlete, every team in every competition, all of them wants to win.

So it can't be the main factor that differentiates winners from losers, and James clear talk about this too.

He had this great question:

"If you were a basketball coach and you ignored goal to win a championship and focused only on what your team does at practice each day, would you still get result?"

"I think you would," he said.

And I agree. If you played sports, you probably heard the saying, "The results will take care of itself."

The three-time Super Bowl winner, Bill Walsh, said something similar.

"The score takes care of itself. " It takes care of itself.

In other words, focusing on winning doesn't matter because it will take care of itself.

Focusing on winning is not included in the equation.

The only thing that matters is that your focus on taking the act that will get you the results.

Winning is for short term and learning is for long term.

To give you an example of this, we'll talk about my experience with Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which is a fight sport.

This concept can be applied to all other areas.

The guy that focuses on winning is probably gonna win more, but that's only in the short term.

To learn something new, to learn a new technique, you will have to first put yourself in situations where you're able to apply that technique, where you're able to learn that technique.

And by doing this, you're risking putting yourself in situations where you will lose and you will fail.

And if you're the guy that focuses on winning, you're not going to want to do this.

So you're not going to be able to learn new things and new techniques.

Second of all, the guy that focuses on winning is going to rely more on his strength than his technique.

A lot of the times in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you're going to be put in situations where you can either use more strength to submit someone or you can use better technique.

And if you're new, using more strength, probably gonna be a higher percentage for you to finish or submit your opponent.

And because your focus is on winning, we're going to use strength.

What you don't realize is that in the long term, the guy that focused on better technique, his submission rate is going to be way higher than yours because he has better technique and he hasn't even applied his full strength yet.

Another concept that comes in when we talk about focusing on winning versus focusing on learning is the concept of external reward versus internal reward.

As I've said earlier, the guy that focused on winning is probably going to win more in the short term.

In other words, he's gonna get more external rewards.

And he's going to think back to how he got this reward, his got this reward by not putting himself in situations where he could lose.

And he got this reward by applying more strength than technique.

So he's going to continue to do those actions by winning and by getting external reward.

Ironically, he is going to reinforce bad actions and ultimately bad habits.

To become the guy that focuses more on learning, you have to realize that if you manage to put yourself in situations where you were able to apply new techniques and learn, you actually won even though you might have lost that round.

Even though externally, it didn't look like you gained something.

You have to realize that you've won.

You have to internally reward yourself.

Lastly, let's talk about when I think it's reasonable to actually focus on winning.

First, I think it's very reasonable to do it now and then just to feel what it's like, feel what it is like to use 100% your strength and speed,

feel what it is like to let your subconscious take care of your techniques while your conscious is 100% focused on winning.

The second time I think it's reasonable to focus on winning is in important competition.

Note that I'm saying important competition and not all competition.

And to give you an example of this, I participated in a Brazilian jiu-jitsu to competition and my focus at that time was on winning.

As a consequence of that, I went down a weight class and I won.

But looking back at it now, I would have changed my focus to learning.

By focusing on learning, I wouldn't have gone down a weight class.

I would have competed at a heavier and more competitive weight class, even though my chance of winning would have gone down.

The reason I would have changed my focus to learning is because of that competition was really not that important.

And my future competitions are going to be more important.

And I would argue that the experience that I would have gotten from competing in a heavier, more competitive weight class would have been of a lot more value than competing at an easier weight class even though I've won.